Gratitude Ramble

One day I am a meditator, chanting amongst Buddhists at Dechen Choling. A different day, a different me is in Paris, watching a man start a fight below my balcony. I am startled by the twitching fury in his hands. One day I’m back at the airport. One day – the same or the next – I arrive in New York again, with a smile on my tired face. My immigration officer is a guitar player too, and he charms me into his country when he notices the instrument on my back. I want to hug him. It’s 5am on my body clock, and I’ve been passed around like a parcel.

A week later, today, I am here in Brooklyn, standing behind a camera pointed at a very pretty woman. She is Anna Fitzgerald, a founding member of Body Actualized, and I am remembering this role I love to play –

Film Maker. Documentarian. Half of Anima Rising Productions. Harper’s accomplice. Spiritual Hunter. Love Spinner. Anna is a goddess of the fairy realm, and we are grateful she wants to appear in our film. We are grateful for her words and original thought.

We interview Brian at Body Actualized too, and he says he doesn’t want to waste his time doing things that don’t relate to his path; things that don’t relate to his own purpose for being on earth. Life’s short. I’ve always felt a little selfish uttering these thoughts aloud, but as he speaks them I see the opposite. We need to make ourselves happy to have the power to seriously help others. They are inextricably linked – self love and selfless love – they are the same thing. When I am peering at the world through loving eyes, my generosity expands further than the perimeter of my own body. When fear is involved, I cannot imagine helping the next person because I am too busy worrying about how I can help myself.

Yesterday I walked through Central Park with two girlfriends and realised that it is autumn. Brown leaves from nowhere suddenly are everywhere, and I am wrapping my fingers up into the sleeves of my sweater. I feel electricity in my chest – this is my favourite season, my best-loved moment. The smell of summer dying, dark evenings, the piles of pumpkins for sale in markets – It does something to me that I can’t put into words. It evokes gratitude somehow, and reminds me of years gone by. Gratitude is the answer.

Doing what we do – following this creative mission, raising positive energy, being here in America – is what is making Harper and I joyful right now. Like magnets, east to west, we are bound together. I can never, ever get this country out of my head, or this girl, so woven into my past, present, and future. And I don’t want to. I trust the universe knows things that we haven’t discovered yet – there is so much purpose in its every step.

I get jaded with the brilliance of life sometimes, and forget to say thank you. It’s good to remind myself. All the time. So here I send gratitude back into the universe, for giving me the strength to follow the path I want to follow. For autumn, for inspiration, for soul mates, for America. For guitar strumming immigration officers. And mostly for the powers that tell me to stay true to what I love.